First impressions of our latest home

 

The Liangma River 良马河 lit up after dark 

We're in prison. Not a maximum-security big house like San Quentin, more like a minimum-security "Club Fed"-type detention house, but thanks to China's Zero COVID policy, it feels at times as if John Carpenter and Kurt Russell have teamed up to make Escape from Beijing.

Yes, I'm exaggerating. A lot. But since arriving in Beijing 北京 in late August upon completion of quarantine in Guangzhou 广州, our lives have been almost entirely restricted to the city's Chaoyang District 朝阳区, where we live not far from the U.S. Embassy, and where my daughter (international school) and I (Chinese class) both study. Life here is governed by the coronavirus, or rather the government's Quixotic determination to prevent even a single case from occurring (which in this age of Omicron and other variants is virtually impossible). In practice this means you cannot travel anywhere within the city via public transport, and enter banks, restaurants, shops and the like, unless the Health Kit phone app shows green. This is ensured by undergoing constant COVID testing, with no more than 72 hours between throat swabs. There's a testing facility close to the embassy that we go to every other day to keep our app the desired green (Amber is also tested frequently at her school).  

And speaking of phone apps, life in China (at least in the urban areas) is governed by them. Everything is done by WeChat 威信 and Alipay 支付宝, from paying in restaurants and shops to renting bicycles and riding on buses and subway trains, and ordering goods from websites like Taobao 淘宝. It was a daylong ordeal getting our Chinese SIM cards and setting up our local bank accounts, and then connecting the latter with the various phone apps so that we could pay for the necessities of daily life (in fact I'm still having issues in that regard with WeChat). With the exception of newly-arrived waiguoren 外国人, hardly anybody here still uses cash, even though it remains legal tender. 

Admittedly, it's extremely convenient to be able to do everything using phone apps and QR codes (when the systems are working in the way they're meant to do, that is). On the other hand, all that data on where you go, what you purchase etc. is not being ignored by the state. In addition, CCTV cameras are everywhere it seems, and photos of all vehicles are taken as they cross major intersections. And, of course, there's the Great Firewall to deal with, which has succeeded in isolating the majority of the population from the rest of the world, even more so in the age of travel restrictions put in place in this age of COVID-19. 

And yet despite the previous four paragraphs, we've been enjoying life in China's capital so far (except for WeChat hassles, but I don't wish to get started on those). Surprisingly, I'm enjoying the Chinese classes I've been taking so far, with the one-on-one teaching format much better suited for a pupil of limited language-learning acuity such as myself when compared to the cram school approach favored by the Foreign Service Institute. Our daughter appears to be off to a good start at her new school. And Shu-E has quickly eased into Beijing life, which shouldn't come as a surprise considering she (as well as Amber) are native Mandarin-speakers. So please have a look at some photos that pull the curtains back a bit on what we've been doing since arriving here some twenty days ago...

Near our residence is the abovementioned Liangma River, on which a lot of money has been obviously spent turning it into a pleasant walking path and evening entertainment area:

The first restaurant we ventured out to (as opposed to ordering in, which we did a lot of in the beginning) was a Taiwanese restaurant called Lugang 鹿港. Our daughter ordered a tea that came in the form of a cute bear that slowly dissolved into drinkable form:

Being a Taiwanese restaurant I asked for a bottle of Taiwan Beer 台灣啤酒, but my wife mistakenly ordered a Tsingtao 青岛啤酒 on Lugang's app (many restaurants require diners to order that way). Which of course is much more preferable to the Formosan version of Budweiser:

In a touch of "authenticity", the Taiwanese sausage came with cloves of garlic:

This is the view from one of my classrooms at the school where I'm studying Mandarin. Note the old neighborhood at the foot of the more modern high-rises:

Amber and Shu-E at the orientation day for our daughter's school:

The school cafeteria has a stream flowing through it, complete with a school of greedy koi ニシキゴイ:

Inspiring students to do...what?:

When in Rome, drink as the hipster Romans:

The management of our residential complex gifted each residence with mooncakes 月饼 to celebrate the upcoming Moon Festival holiday:

Amber and I went out for lunch one weekend at Samurai Curry, where she was mildly annoyed that I insisted that she, as a native speaker of 普通话 (國語), do all the ordering. My teachers would later take her side:

She somehow was able to get the marble out of a bottle of ramune ラムネ (the secret lay in unscrewing the blue part at the top):

On another occasion, this time with my wife also in tow, we had lunch at one of the Beijing branches of the Japanese rāmen chain Ajisen Ramen 味千ラーメン:

Posing outside the SOLANA shopping mall:

In addition to the usual security guards, we have additional watchdogs at our residential compound:

The weather has been hot (though not brutally so) and humid (though not brutally so), and generally sunny (with little in the way of Beijing's notorious smog...so far). The only exception came one evening in the form of a brief but violent hailstorm:

I nicked this photo off a compound WeChat group:

Following a visit to a local (albeit international) hospital, Shu-E suggested having lunch at yet another Japanese restaurant, located across the street. For a society that's been taught since the Tiananmen Massacre 六四事件 to despise Japan (and are a fed a nightly diet of TV war dramas featuring superhuman Chinese patriots singlehandedly defeating the cruel and barbaric soldiers of the Empire of Japan 大日本帝国), Japanese food seems to be very popular in Beijing. In this restaurant, a couple of patrons were wearing rented yukata 浴衣 while dining (sorry, no photos taken to protect the innocent):

I had the "cowboy breakfast" for my lunch:

At night the banks of the Liangma River are lit up:

Just outside of SOLANA there's a small night market where we ordered some "Taiwan wheel pies":

In case you haven't yet picked up on it from the preceding paragraphs, we've been eating a lot of Japanese food since arriving in Beijing, and most of the time it has been at my wife's suggestion. Like when Shu-E wanted to have lunch at a place just across from the U.S. Embassy. In all fairness, it was her second choice; the first 饭馆 she wanted to go, Lugang, was swamped with the lunch hour rush crowd:

My main course was gyūdon 牛丼. Speaking of beef bowls, Amber and I were elated to learn that Yoshinoya 吉野家 is well-represented in Beijing. On the other hand, though, I was crushed at not being able to locate any local outlets of in-Japan favorites like MOS Burger モスバーガー and Mister Donut ミスタードーナツ:

With the Mid-Autumn Festival 中秋节 almost upon us, the compound management strung up lanterns to set the appropriate mood:

A laser show along the Liangma. Pleasure boats cruise up and down in the evenings:

Visiting the Sanyuanli 三源里 wet market:

Nearby the market was a small shop selling locally-made 啤酒. The sales clerk filled up a plastic bottle with suds direct from the tap:

Saturday the 10th was the day of the Mid-Autumn Festival. The three of us went to yet another Japanese restaurant - it was my wife's idea again, I swear. She ordered the large draft beer, while I showed my age with the smaller glass. There was a time when I could go to 居酒屋 and order the 大ジョッキ, but I was much younger and living in Tōkyō 東京 back then:

A feeling of 懐かしい washed over me as we ordered dishes such as yakitori 焼き鳥 and tsukune つくね:

 

With Amber staying at home to recover from a mild cold, the missus and I made our first foray out of Chaoyang yesterday (Sunday), riding the subway to check out the Dongjiaominxiang Alley 东郊民巷, which served as the district for foreign embassies starting from around 1900 (the Chaoyang area where we live now plays that role). Our first stop was St. Michael's Church, founded by a French priest and completed in 1904. Alas, like all the other historic buildings on this day, it was closed to visitors:

The neighborhood's historic architecture attracted couples having wedding photos taken:

This particular pair posed outside the site of the French post office (1901):

Your humble scribe stands like an idiot in the middle of the road in front of the site of the former Japanese legation:

The Dongjiaominxiang Hotel once housed the Spanish Embassy:

Across the street from the hotel is the Hongdu Clothes Shop. Among it's noted customers is Taiwanese LDP political figure Lien Chan 連戰 (and his wife), no doubt during one of his many trips to China to sell out the island's democracy:

There were no plaques on the outside of the now China Court Museum explaining its original occupant(s):

The Beijing Police Museum, however, wasn't afraid to announce it was once the Beijing branch of the National City Bank of New York (1914):

This plaqueless façade was also a mystery. What made it more even so was that behind the gate was a solid brick wall:

The end of the road, and time to turn back:

Shu-E wanted to have this lunch at this restaurant, but the line to get in just before noon was too long. She rationalized going somewhere else by noting the place only a had a history going back to 1994:

So instead we went to a shopping mall a few blocks away and ate at Meizhou Xiaochi 眉州小吃, where I had a bowl of 碗杂干臊面, and contented myself with the Google translation of "bowl of dry noodles". Because the alternative would have been "urine dry noodles", as the character 臊 can mean "the smell of pee". Sometimes in China it's best not to translate names of dishes:

Beijing may be the modern face of China, but touches of the old way of life, like this sidewalk haircut, can still be seen:

On the way back from Dongjiaominxiang our taxi passed by the CCTV Headquarters building, not so affectionately known as "big boxer shorts" 大裤衩:

Beijing has an excellent share bike system, payable of course with the various phone apps. The bicycles aren't exactly in conditions expected by cycling twats*, and the small frames can be hard on the knees for someone of my stature, but they are ubiquitous and cheap. Depending on how long you use one, the fee can be as low as RMB1.5 (less than an American quarter):

Today (Monday) is a national holiday in observance of Zhongqiujie, meaning I don't have to go to work (i.e. attend classes). Our daughter's school is still open, having considered Saturday to have been the Mid-Autumn Festival holiday, but seeing as Amber hasn't fully gotten over her cold, we've elected to keep her at home to rest (though she has done some schoolwork online). Using the aforementioned share bikes, the wife and I rode this morning to a small flower market near the embassy:

Shu-E negotiates with a flower seller regarding a possible deal. In the end, my wife bought some cape jasmines 栀子花 for RMB90, or roughly $13 - not a bad price, considering the flowerpot was thrown in, and free delivery to our residence is included:

A beer called Forbidden City 紫禁城. China's craft beer scene appears to have really taken off since we were living and working in Shanghai some eight years ago. Which always seems to happen when I leave the scene. For years in Taiwan I suffered from the extremely limited choice between Taiwan Beer and Heineken, only for the country to develop a small microbrewery industry after we moved to the U.S. At 8.5% this 啤酒 packed a decent punch. Either that, or my tolerance level is weakening with age:

Returning to the idea laid out at the beginning of this post about being confined: though we're out of quarantine and free to move about the city and the country, we still feel like prisoners. As long as the Zero COVID policy remains in place, we can't travel anywhere abroad other than back to the U.S. on charter flights organized by the State Department, so long-planned trips to Japan and Taiwan are out of the question until at least spring of next year. Even domestic travel comes with risks - recently the whole of Chengdu 成都 and parts of Shenzhen 深圳 were put under lockdown because of a few hundred coronavirus cases, just two of many places in the country suffering from the no tolerance policy. Should we visit somewhere outside of Beijing and cases are discovered during our stay there, we will not be able to leave our hotel until there are no more positive cases recorded. Shanghai 上海, as an example, was in lockdown for more than40 days earlier this year. Which is how we find ourselves (partly self-)confined to Beijing for the indefinite future. And, ominously, in the last few days, cases of COVID-19 have been reported in Beijing. 

Is the capital too important to completely lockdown? Stay tuned to find out...

*Not you Joe and Rich!